More corpses wander farther up the street. It is actually a relief to see the dead. That means that this place might not have been stripped clean yet. We may even find fuel.
"Is everyone okay?" I ask.
I look back and see Scout with her arm in front of Stevie to brace him. Then I hear Hoff curse as he slams the car door.
“Chase!” Hoff yells.
I get out of the truck and scan the road. A couple dozen corpses crowded around a church take notice of us and snarl and moan as they head our way.
“You fucking idiot!” Hoff screams as he looks at the crumpled hood of the Chevy.
“Hoff!” I yell to get his attention.
He looks over and notices the corpses and scrambles to grab his rifle out of the car.
I raise the Honey Badger and open fire on the dead. Scout leans out the window and fires as well. Within seconds, Blake, Danielle and Natalie are out in the street laying down fire, too.
That scrappy little mutt even hops out of the truck. He snarls and growls at the corpse that I struck and knocked into the ditch as it struggles to get upright again. It reaches out and the dog yelps and turns to run but the stiff gets hold of his tail. Stitch growls and snaps his teeth at the fingers of the thing.
“Stitch!” Stevie screams. He tries to fight off his dad when Steven restrains him from leaving the vehicle.
Hoff sees what is happening and jumps over the hood of the smashed Chevy and then I lose sight of him as I turn to focus my fire on the remaining corpses coming up the road.
I shoot a guy about my age with a beard and a ridiculous looking fur hat on his head. Then I center the rifle on a preacher with a face that was gnawed half off and fire off my last couple rounds hitting him in the shoulder and then the head. The last of the corpses falls to the pavement and then I lower the rifle.
I glance over and see Hoff holding Stitch. He raises the dog up and sets him in the back of the truck.
“Is he okay?” Stevie asks.
“Yeah,” Hoff hisses. The big guy winces in obvious pain.
“What’s wrong?” I ask Hoff as I swap a fresh magazine into the Honey Badger.
As soon as I ask him, I come to realize what must have happened.
Hoff lowers his head and looks down at his leg.
“How bad is it?” I ask him.
“It’s always bad,” Hoff says. He limps around the front of the pickup and I can see the blood spilling down over his right boot. “I’m about as fucked up as that Chevy now.”
“Hoff! Jesus,” Scout says when she sees him. She rushes to his side and he raises his arm to let her help him walk a few more feet to the back of the truck.
Danielle hurries over to help him but Hoff holds up a hand to stop her. I think Hoff already knows there is nothing anyone can really do to help him now.
Hoff leans back against the truck and pulls out a tourniquet from his bag.
“Let me help,” I tell him. He hands me the tourniquet and I crouch down and slip it under his boot. I lift it up his leg, and tighten it above the bite. The thing really got him. With the amount of blood he has already lost, he won’t last very long.
“Thanks, Corporal,” Hoff says to me.
“I’m sorry, Hoff,” I say. “I fucked up.”
He holds up a hand to get me to stop talking.
“It’s okay, kid,” he says. “Some shit like this was bound to happen eventually.”
“You should have just let that thing eat the fucking dog,” I say.
Hoff manages a laugh. He reaches back and pets Stitch on the head. The dog tilts his head back and licks the palm of Hoff’s hand and then moves to the edge of the truck and laps his tongue across the side of Hoff’s face.
“Don’t think I would do it any different if I could,” Hoff sniffs.
The door to the church bursts open down the road and a body comes crawling out. At first, I think it’s just another corpse as it tumbles down the stairs.
Blake starts walking towards the figure. The person raises an arm and calls for help. Scout, Danielle, and Natalie jog to catch up with Blake.
“Go on,” Hoff says. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Stay here,” I tell Claire and Steven as I walk down the road.
The man gets to his feet, grabs on to the railing on the side of the church steps and props himself up.
“We’re here to help,” I hear Blake say while cautiously approaching the stranger.
The man is shirtless, and I notice something metallic around his neck that glints in the sunlight.
Dog tags.
I quicken my pace. If he was armed forces I should be the one to talk to him. Before Danielle steps closer to him and blocks my view, I notice his clothes are covered in crusted mud and dry blood. He holds up his arm and pleads for water in a hoarse voice.
Blake grabs a bottle out of his pack and offers it to the man. He takes it and drinks eagerly as water spills out of the corners of his mouth. That’s when I finally get a good look at his face.
“No fucking way,” I say as I tighten my grip on the rifle. “I know him.”
The man lowers the bottle and squints his eyes to look at me.
“His name is Jenson.”
Thirty-eight
“Who?” Blake asks me.
I look at the face of the man again to be sure. It’s been a couple months since I’ve seen him. He no longer has a shaved head. His dark hair has grown out a couple inches. The withered man is so thin that he can barely stand. His face is gaunt and his lips are blistered, but it is definitely him.
Jenson.
You don’t forget the face of a man that was responsible for the deaths of half of your platoon.
“I think you got me confused with somebody else, kid,” Jenson lies.
I reach down and yank the dog tags off his chest and look at them just to be sure, then I hand them to Blake.
“This fucking piece of shit got half my team killed,” I say.
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Jenson says.
I raise up my rifle.
“Your team fucked up the mission,” Jenson says. “That wasn’t my fault at all.”
“You son of a bitch,” I curse him.
“Hold on, everyone,” Blake says. “Let’s all just take a breath and calm down.”
He stares at me until I lower my rifle slightly.
“What’s going on?” Hoff says.
I glance over my shoulder to see Claire helping him along as he hobbles over from the truck.
“Look, man,” Jenson says to me. He pauses to clear his throat. “I’m sorry about your platoon.”
“Sorry?” I scoff.
“Easy, Chase,” Blake says.
“Don’t tell me to take it easy,” I warn him.
“Look at him,” Blake says. “He’s broken. He isn’t going to hurt anyone right now.”
I lower the rifle and turn around and take a few steps away from them.
“I never meant for any of that to happen,” Jenson pleads. “I was just trying to keep everyone at Holloman safe. We lost most of our men that night, too.”
My head feels like it is ready to explode. I know Jenson is defenseless now. He is weak and desperate and killing him won’t do anything to bring my brothers back. But, I feel like if I turn around and look at him, I won’t be able to stop myself from pulling the trigger.
“How did you get up here?” Hoff asks him.
“After his team led half a million fucking zombies to Holloman, we had to get the hell out of town,” he says. “Tried to head up north, but of course that turned to shit real fast.”
“What happened?” Blake asks.
“Reapers,” Jenson says.
“You’ve seen them?” Hoff asks.
Jenson nods.
“Who are they?” Hoff asks him.
“You ever hear the story about that company in Nam that went into the jungle and never came out. Some people say they stayed there forever. Went insane. Bathed in the blood of
the enemy. All that shit.”
Hoff nods.
“Yeah,” Jenson says. “They’d be like a pack of cub scouts next to the Reapers.”
“They’re military?” Hoff asks.
Jenson shakes his head.
“They’re monsters,” Jenson says.
“How’d you manage to survive?” Blake asks him.
“You all are going to help me, right?” Jenson asks.
Blake hesitates.
“I’ll tell you everything,” Jenson says. “Just don’t leave me to die out here.”
He sounds so pitiful as he begs us to save his life. Jenson seems like a completely different person than the asshole that caused so much chaos and death. Still, I can’t bring myself to turn around and look at him.
“Yeah,” Blake agrees. “We will take you with us.”
“Where?” Jenson wants to know. “Because some places around here aren’t safe.”
“Cheyenne Mountain,” Blake says.
“There’s still people alive in there?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Blake says. “We just talked to someone two days ago.”
“No shit,” says Jenson. “They never responded to our radio calls.”
Probably because they didn’t want fucking traitors in their goddamn bunker.
“So,” Blake says. “How are you still alive?”
“We were in some little shithole Mexican town,” he says. “Probably about sixty of us that made it out of Holloman. Reapers showed up in the middle of the night. Hundreds of them. Started dragging people out of the houses. I knew we were fucked. Hopped out a back window and crawled into a fucking sewage pipe. Just lay there all night listening to people screaming and howling while they killed every last one of them.”
“That’s awful,” Danielle says.
“I ain’t proud of it,” Jenson says.
“No, I meant what they did to those people,” Danielle says. “I can’t blame you for hiding. You were just trying to survive.”
“They killed all sixty of them?” Blake asks him.
“No,” Jenson says. “I’d sent a team back to Alamogordo to look for supplies, but they fucking vanished.”
Rhodes.
“Reapers probably got them, too” he says.
Or I did.
“But who knows,” Jenson says. “Maybe they just decided to fuck us over and took off. I kind of hope that’s what they did. Maybe they’d still be alive then.”
I stand there with my back to him and my eyes closed as I listen, but I can’t tell if this is all some act he is putting on to save his ass, or if he is right and somewhere along the way it all got twisted up in my mind.
Maybe he was never the monster I made him out to be. Maybe it was me all along.
“All I know is none of it would have ever happened if that devil dog over there and his team had just done their fucking jobs,” Jenson says. “It’s all on them.”
By the time he finishes his sentence, I’ve already turned around and raised the rifle.
I hesitate for a split second.
Maybe I should be the bigger man, the hero.
Show him mercy.
Fuck that.
I fire off a round and then another and another, and I keep going until Jenson falls backward and crashes to the ground.
Everyone just stands there and stares at Jenson for a long moment after I stop shooting. Then they turn their stunned stares at me. I can only imagine what they’re thinking right now, but I don’t even care. I lower my rifle and take a last look at Jenson lying on the ground.
Blake finally turns away from the scene and covers his face with his hand.
“We got all the intel he had,” I say. “Let’s get moving.”
“Why?” Blake yells.
“Why what?” I say.
Blake raises his arms up and pushes back his messy hair. Then he flails his arms in frustration as he lowers them and approaches me. His eyes are wild and he gets up in my face and points at Jenson lying on the ground.
“What the hell good did that do?” he questions me.
“He had that coming,” I tell Blake. “Back the fuck off.”
“You murdered him,” Blake says.
“So what if I did?” I say. I hold what remains of my hands out toward him. “You want to arrest me?”
What happens next surprises me.
Blake raises his rifle and points it at my face.
“Blake,” Danielle says his name to stop him from getting involved, but Blake ignores her and keeps his eyes focused on me.
I doubt he has it in him to shoot me, but he doesn’t seem to be in control of himself at the moment.
“You can shoot me if you want,” I tell him. “Go ahead.”
Blake adjusts his grip on the rifle, his finger rests on the trigger.
“It can’t be like this,” Blake says. “We can’t just keep going around killing each other like this. It has to stop.”
“This is how it is now,” I tell him. “Same as it has always been.”
Blake shakes his head slightly as he grits his teeth.
“If you kill me, it will just mean I’m right,” I say. “So, go ahead. Pull that trigger.”
I’m not sure if I want him to do it or not.
“Don’t do it, Blake,” Danielle says.
She walks by his side and places her hand on his shoulder, then pushes the barrel of the gun down.
“Come on,” she whispers. Danielle pulls his arm and leads him back to the convoy. Blake hangs his head and his legs seem unsteady as he walks.
If Danielle hadn’t stepped in, I’m certain that I’d be dead right now. That is why Blake can hardly stand on his own. He knows I was right.
“The world is better off without him,” I call after them.
I turn to see Hoff swaying slightly, so I help him walk back to the vehicles. I finally take a look around the town and spot some cars parked outside of the steakhouse fifty yards up the road.
“You still have that hose?” I ask Hoff.
“Yeah,” he grunts. “In my bag.”
I let go of him and he leans back against the wrecked Chevy. I open the door and climb across the seats.
“You might regret what just happened one day,” he says.
“I had my reasons,” I tell him.
“I understand why you did it,” Hoff says. “I’m just telling you that you might feel different about it later. Be ready for that.”
“Don’t you worry about me,” I tell him. “You got enough to worry about.”
I locate the hose and pull it out of the bag and then extract myself from the car.
“At least I got to enjoy one last ride,” Hoff grins.
“Hang in there, Hoff,” I clap a hand on his shoulder. “I’m going to go get some fuel and we’ll get you out of here.”
I leave him and jog back up the road toward the parking lot of the steakhouse while I scan the surrounding woods for the dead. I glance down at Jenson lying on the ground, expecting to feel something, some sense of satisfaction or peace. I don’t know what I was hoping for exactly, but I just don’t feel anything at all.
I open the gas cap of an old sedan and slide the hose down into the fuel tank. Then I suck at the other end of the hose and gag on the fumes as I stick it into the gas can. As the fuel drains from the car into the container, I watch the rest of the group surrounding Hoff. Scout crouches down beside him and sobs into his shoulder; he reaches his hand up and squeezes her arm.
“Come on,” I urge the slowly trickling gasoline, even though I know that it doesn’t matter how long this takes.
Nothing will help Hoff now.
As soon as the can is full, I carry it back and pour half into each truck. It isn’t that much gasoline, but it will get us to Cheyenne Mountain. After I toss the hose and gas can into the back of the pickup, I go over and help get Hoff up off the street.
“Come on, big guy,” I say as I help him to his feet.
He is barely conscious.
His legs are already doing little to help him stand. Scout gets on the other side of him to assist me.
“Let’s get him in the back of the pickup,” I tell her.
“No,” Hoff mumbles. He lifts his head a moment. “You both know I’m not going to make it.”
“We’re not leaving you,” Scout says as she tries to pull Hoff toward the truck.
“Stop,” Hoff coughs. He straightens up and manages to stand on his own feet again.
“Hoff,” Scout pleads.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I’d rather go out on my own terms.”
“No,” Scout shakes her head. “I’m not comfortable with that.”
She wraps her arms around him again.
“Get comfortable being uncomfortable,” Hoff says to her. He wraps an arm around her back and holds her for a minute. She clenches the fabric of his shirt tightly as he gives her a kiss on the forehead.
When she finally releases him, Hoff manages a smile.
“Go on,” he says. “Get that kid someplace safe.”
Scout nods and turns to get back into the truck. I can tell she is trying to keep herself together, to be strong for Hoff.
I hold out my hand to say goodbye to Hoff and he takes it in his big paw but holds on to it for a long moment.
“It’s all on you now,” he tells me. “Don’t fuck this up.”
“I won’t,” I tell him.
“They’ll make you a hero for this,” Hoff reminds me.
“Whatever,” I say. “It’s not like I ever cared about that.”
“I know,” he says. “I’m just warning you.”
He finally releases my hand.
“Get out of here,” he says.
I climb into the truck and we pull back out into the road. As we round the curve, I look back and see Hoff take out his sidearm before climbing into the Chevy. A few seconds after we leave town, we hear the crack of the gunshot through the thin mountain air.
Thirty-nine
Claire directs me through the mountain roads as Scout stares out the window and lets the tears trickling from her black eyes stream down her swollen face.
ROTD (Book 3): Rage of the Dead Page 24